The dispute unfolded as the Trump administration renewed criticism of CNN’s handling of Iran-related wartime coverage, focusing on what it said was the network’s decision to air remarks from Iran’s new supreme leader. According to the White House, CNN aired a portion of the public statement by Mojtaba Khamenei, which it described in strongly personal terms while tying the network to the broader way the U.S. government characterizes Iran’s leadership. The administration’s response came after a similar earlier clash involving CNN’s interview segment, and it added another episode to a longer-running pattern in which Trump-era officials have targeted CNN during major news cycles.
The earlier criticism came two days before Thursday, when Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, took issue with CNN anchor Erin Burnett’s interview with Hossein Mousavian. In that segment, Burnett asked Mousavian what he had been hearing about the Iranian government’s interest in having talks with the United States, and Mousavian said there wasn’t much. Cheung responded on X with what the report characterized as a dismissal of CNN’s handling of information from Iranian sources.
On Thursday, the White House renewed its challenge after CNN aired part of Khamenei’s statement, his second public message after succeeding his father, who had been killed in an Israeli airstrike, according to the report. The White House said on social media that “fake news CNN just aired four straight minutes of uninterrupted Iranian state TV,” and it added additional language attacking the Iranian government. The White House’s post also said that the network was repeating the Iranian regime’s messaging, which it framed as coming from a “murderous” regime.
CNN did not address Cheung’s earlier criticism directly in its Thursday response, but it responded to the White House attack tied to the decision to air Khamenei’s remarks. The network said it had aired portions of the statement because it was “a critical component in helping audiences understand where this conflict is heading” and because the remarks had news value. CNN also said other outlets—including Sky News and Al Jazeera—showed portions of the ayatollah’s statement live, placing the network’s decision in the context of broader international coverage.
While CNN did not air the statement in full, the report said the network showed an anchor reading part of Khamenei’s remarks in Farsi with an English translation. After the broadcast, correspondent Nick Paton Walsh gave a debrief to anchor Kate Bolduan describing what was not shown as well as what was. Walsh said the absence of a clear face—“to have proof of his health and survival”—was as important as the message itself, and he characterized what was delivered as “a handwritten message” that “mostly reiterates things we kind of already knew,” according to the account.
The report said other U.S. and international outlets treated the statement as newsworthy, with many sharing alerts or immediate coverage of what Khamenei vowed regarding continued attacks in the region and plans described as choking off the world’s oil supply. It also said The New York Times led with a story about the speech soon after it was delivered, later writing that the remarks were “an early indication of how the new supreme leader would approach the war,” and how he would lead the country.
The dispute also intersected with questions about where viewers can encounter adversary messaging even without television coverage. The report said the Tech Transparency Project has reported that several Iranian leaders and institutions maintain verified accounts on X, owned by Trump ally Elon Musk. It said CNBC reported that Khamenei has one such account and that an X post with his portrait included text of the remarks in Farsi and an English translation, even as the report noted X is officially blocked in Iran and users may bypass restrictions with a virtual private network.
In comments included in the report, Jane Ferguson, a veteran international correspondent and founder of the journalism platform Noosphere, said it was legitimate for CNN to air the remarks because the leaders’ statements were newsworthy, and she argued that government leaders do not decide which reporting journalists should air. Historian Douglas Brinkley of Rice University, in the report, said it was unfair for CNN to be singled out while also emphasizing the need for care, describing the risk of being used as a propaganda tool even while insisting that understanding what an enemy is saying can provide important context about whether there is a peace offering or “a nuance.”
The exchange reflects a broader tension for war reporting: even when a government’s adversarial posture makes its communications politically charged, audiences may still seek clarity on what leaders are signaling. Here, the fight was not just over what Khamenei said, but over who chooses to air it, how much is shown, and how officials and media outlets interpret the responsibilities of journalism during wartime.